Insect-borne illnesses on the rise — CDC

Recent research has suggested that Lyme disease alone strikes up to 300,000 Americans every year, as much as 10-times higher than the number of diagnoses actually made.

Diseases transmitted by ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes are becoming more unsafe and far more numerous: Between 2004 and 2016, they tripled to almost 650,000 cases, a new CDC report finds.

Mosquito-borne diseases are the best-known vector-borne diseases but other vectors are ticks, flies, fleas, and some freshwater snails. Pathogens, transmitted through a vector's bite, cause illness.

For most of these diseases, the only way to stop outbreaks is through mosquito control, which is expensive and rarely effective.

During the 2004-2016 period, 9 vector-borne human diseases were reported for the first time from within the United States and USA territories.

Common symptoms of Lyme disease include fever, headache, fatigue, and a characteristic bulls-eye skin rash. "Where there are ticks, there comes diseases", Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC's Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, tells Reuters. In this report, 16 different vector borne illnesses are identified. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

A mosquito is pictured biting a hand in this undated stock photo.

"We've seen an increase here in Vermont over the last couple of years in tick-borne diseases in particular". Its most notable epidemic during 2004-2016 occurred in 2012, in Dallas County, Texas.

Mosquito-borne infections are most likely to hit sunnier states and territories.

Lyme disease is the most common among all the tick-borne diseases and represents 80% of all the diseases transmitted by ticks. The only flea-borne disease is plague, but it, thankfully, is extremely rare. Endemic plague, transmitted mostly in the rural southwestern U.S., did not exceed 17 cases in a year.

The Centers for Disease Control said in its "Illnesses on the Rise" report that NY was in the top 20 percent of all USA states and territories when it came to occurrences of tick and mosquito pathogens. "And we don't know what will threaten Americans next", Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the CDC, said in a statement. "I think there's always concern that potentially warmer temperatures will drive changes in insect and arthropod populations", he says.

"The mosquito-borne diseases tend to get worse during heat waves", Petersen explained. We want to learn how your health departments, public health agencies and care providers are preparing for and responding to tick- and mosquito-borne diseases. A CDC official said people should take precautions to prevent bites.

The causes could be linked to more global travel and the climate.

Developing and improving laboratory and diagnostic tests for these diseases. You can still find pages created before the Trump administration that fully report the science, such as a two-pager titled, "Climate change increases the number and geographic range of disease-carrying insects and ticks".

"Vector-borne diseases such as Lyme disease and Zika virus disease can devastate patients and their families, causing significant suffering", said Dr. Paul Auwaerter, president of the IDSA.

During this study period, Puerto Rico was impacted often.

Ticks need deer or rodents as their main blood hosts, and those have increased as forests in suburbs have gotten thicker, deer hunting has waned, and rodent predators like foxes have disappeared.